Word of the Week

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Immediately: Eutheos (Gk.): meaning “straightening, immediately, forthwith”

Immediately can be found numerous times in the CCC with its wide-ranging meaning, for this brief study I would like to focus on the call of discipleship and the listen/response relationship with God. Prudence, as the centerpiece to discipleship, is the moral virtue that draws out an immediate pronouncement to our conscience (CCC 1806).  Man is in need of God’s grace to straighten his ways toward an authentically lived yes that proclaims the gospel and acts in accordance with a formed conscience (CCC1960). God has already placed within us in Baptism a profound desire to know and love God, “God immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man. He has placed in man a longing for truth and goodness that only he can satisfy” (CCC 2002). All Christian faithful have the duty to nurture the virtues given to us in our Baptism and to respond immediately when God calls.

The word immediately is found 85 times in Sacred Scripture with 80 of those occurrences in the New Testament and 40 from the gospel of Mark. The gospel of Mark uses the aforementioned Greek term 40 times to collectively speak of the holy haste in which Christ performs his acts in the Kingdom of God. Among the many themes throughout this gospel that accompanies this word is the movement of the Spirit and the healing power of God. This is seen in the Baptism of Jesus (Mk.1:10-11), Cleansing of the Leper (1:42), Healing of the Paralytic (2:10-12), Hemorrhaging Woman (5:29-30), Jairus’ Daughter (5:41-42), Woman’s Faith from Phoenicia (7:24-30), Blind Man at Behsaida (9:20-29), and Bartimaeus Receiving His Sight (10:46-52). Furthermore, Mark uses this term in his opening chapter to speak of the compelling invitation from Christ to the disciples to become fishers of men. In haste, the disciples respond to this invitation from Christ and become missionaries for the Kingdom of God (Mk.1:18-20).

All faithful Christians, cleric and lay, are called to participate in the priestly mission that was entrusted to the first apostles. As clerical priests have a unique participation in the ministerial and sacramental priesthood, all Christians are called in their ordinary priesthood to participate in the compelling invitation offered by Christ to build up the Kingdom of God (1 Cor.3:9). This construction of the Kingdom of God comes in the embrace of our primary sacramental vocation and is augmented in every heroic response to do the Fathers will.

During this past week, we have had many opportunities to be reminded of the principle challenge confronting us as Christians today in the wake of the 36th Anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. This is a time to rekindle our sense of urgency in the fight for the unborn, mindful that they are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and every defense for the unborn is a matter of building up the Kingdom of Life. Let us go out and meet this irrational behavior with the Incarnation of Truth and Reason!

“Would you like to see God glorified by you? Then rejoice in your brother's progress and you will immediately give glory to God. Because his servant could conquer envy by rejoicing in the merits of others, God will be praised.”

--St. John Chrysostom

Primary Texts Consulted

• Catholic Bible. Suggested trans. Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition, 1997.

 

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